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 The Paris-Strasbourg is gliding along the green Marne. The water is shivering at the first shine of dawn and everyone, male and female, seizing their satchel as Château-Thierry approaches ... The descendants of Jean de la Fontaine stretch out in their nightshirt : are they as happy as the lusty people of the Contes ? Concerning descendants, Mr Lieutenant of Wolf-Hunting, teacher at the College in the old days, will kindly assure me that at Chaury are known only descendants of ... Madame de la Fontaine. 1958 7 December, 11 a.m. – Teacher Carvel makes them “sing” in the neighbouring classroom - to exhaustion. “ Noch einmal ! Again, again “, he barks at them (if a dog had barked like that, it would have been hanged !) with vocal chords such as a Feldwebel’s of the German army at the time of the great epoch. Professeur Carvel, who in his old age took a wife young in every respect, calls his fellow-players as indicated on the programme, runs his horn into everything that budges, as a result of twenty years of practising in the parisian establishments on the left bank, and spends gastronomical holidays in Alsace, with Babeau - that’s his young female - who is willing, ardent and beautiful and good for the amorous battle. From the classroom window, the roofs of the former College are visible, the red curtains of the dormitory windows and the green shutters of Si j’étais riche (If I was a rich man) ... and beyond, well beyond, the shady forests, the rich countryside, the rivers stocked with fish and the vast prairies undulating as far as la Ferté-Milon.
18.00 – In the Strasbourg-Paris, finished reading this vintage novel, hogwash by a Sorbonicole with a pallid face, ex-teacher at the lycée Papi and lecturer in the big stores, tale of an oflagophonetic captivity in Austria and of his stirrings for escape, the lot dusted with such a profusion of silly remarks, bloated with unctuous autosatisfaction, that the fellow, in his chair, hair dyed, fingernails cared for, making eyes at his female listeners in the front row, shines lusterless in his fairly well-cut suit. His reasonably biting verve caused him to be admitted to the society of the people of Spirit, secretarial department ... But already this “hard nut”, as says Carvel, clanks around on the points of the Eastern station - highclass gastronomical buffet and buffers in the shape of a pachydermal backside. “Bundle of bones”, teacher of arts, with limbs compared to which an ant’s seem plump, unfolds himself in length and bumps against the knees of Low-Size, master gymnast with gladiator shoulders in want of a crowd. And everybody back to their cage-of-daily-things, while down there, in Champagne, peasants and female tongue-wielders are sipping old-fashioned soup and the museum goes to sleep until next morning. Monday 8 April – House of Jean de la Fontaine in Château-Thierry. Like J.C. multiplying the loaves of bread, J.-A., in the House-Museum of the Fabulist, multiplies the crusts.
Friday 17 April – On the train Chaury-Paris, Mrs Rustic, science teacher and daughter of a field officer, calls her father a “bastard”, then speaks of her husband, assistant at the Faculty, who finds her “half-witted” because on a day when someone was knocking on the door of their bedroom where his male was naked and she saying mechanically “ come in !”, the maid had seen the calf which she should not have seen ... 16 February –
Lunch at professeur Carvel’s, on the 6th floor of a street in the Quartier latin. A succession of small attic rooms, nest of this former deputy in education and Babeau, his blond wife, twenty-five years his junior, ex-serving lady in a clothes shop, who is now at the till of a boutique selling frippery on the Grands Boulevards. She clucks, he scolds her. She looks at him, he smiles with this half foxy, half porky ex
Balance sheets of the fiscal year. Common Market. Two Englishmen in their thirties, collapsed on the cold pavement outside the Prisunic Mozart, surrounded by beer cans and snuggled up to a warm dog, are doing the Channel : Rule Britannia ! Foreign affairs. Protesting against the French nuclear tests in the Pacific, the Australian union of the maids of honour in Canberra has decided to boycott fine lingerie Made in France : Melbourne and Sydney will join the movement. The singer Madonna and Miss Stone had already taken the lead. Will the Queen of England find herself without dessous downside up ?
Political economy (or Maastricht Treaty)
Military economy (or the Stork are back)
Criticism :
Auto-criticism :
Morality, of Pierre Le Loyer (born in 1550)
The Strasbourg-Paris is gliding along the green Marne. The water is shivering at the first shades of dusk. Leaning on his elbows on the rail along the corridor, forehead against the cold glass, the traveller from afar will - perhaps - see, at the approach of Chaury, Master Fox sitting on his backside in some sloping meadow crowned by a dark wood from which rises the prattling of a tender Babette who laughs better than Bègue au château de Belin.
Notes :
* a) Escholier = pupil in Old French
** Ferdinand Lop (1891 Marseille-1974 Saint-Sébastien-de-Morsent (Eure). Translation : Dagmar Coward Kuschke (Tübingen) |
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